Finally had a chance to launch iView Media Pro 3. Guess what? Mikey likes it. If nothing else it has a way to FTP to your site when you're done (which is not such a big deal) but finally - you can tell it to SKIP the image files that it hasn't touched. Before, if I made changes to an HTML gallery, I would then go into Dreamweaver, and unless I had added some images, I would just manually upload the changed files (the media page and the index pages).
The only down thing is that Media Pro in the gallery building stage, still seems to want to re-make the jpgs, i.e. when it's done I checked the timestamp of the jpgs and they had been updated. I'm not sure why it wants to do this all the time or if there is a way around it (probably is - I just haven't tripped over it).
Still - that it knows which Image files don't need to be re-uploaded is a big deal.
One other quibble - so far. You could always save certain preferences for each gallery in the settings tab. However - and this seems stupid - it doesn't associate the ftp gallery to load to with your settings. In other words - if you have several galleries - make sure you change where they're going in the ftp settings. They also changed the gallery directory structure slightly. So for example if I were to republish the blog gallery - some images from the blog are going to have to be repointed.
As far as any conversion problems: none so far. Just opened the old version 2 catalogs and everything was as it was - though they have added a much better user-interface for the catalog sets.
There are several sections that relate to gallery building that are new - but I haven't had a chance to play with them yet; but at this point I'll take the shortcut to version II off the desktop and continue using vers. III.
11/05/2005
More Lulu
I setup a Self-publishing section in the Forum so I can keep track of the Lulu publishing saga.
* * *
I setup my Lulu store: there ain't nothin' for sale there yet - but it won't be long now:
Click here to take a peek.
First product is going to be NEW YORK NIGHT - 2006
Then I'm definitely going to do one of the Mermaid Day Parade
And then a political calendar - NEW YORK PROTESTS
Lester suggested that I do a preliminary calendar based on the book we're writing together: THE 11TH MAN with pictures and quotes from same. At the rate I'm going you may have a calendar and no book. I guess that would be your pre-product publicity.
It really is sort of fun - and gives me a feeling of another avenue of expression opening up.
* * *
Update: from what I can figure out - Lulu is using a Xerox iGen 3 printer for color work. There are all sorts of threads on Lulu about color management, but most seem to recommend sRGB which seems odd given a narrower gamut - but what do I know about gamuts. Not that much right now but I'm going to find out. It would be kind of cool if the Calendar was printed on the iGen 3 since I could begin to make adjustments in my workflow that I could use later on for the book publishing part. The one thing I can say for sure, after reading numerous Lulu threads, is that for the book - you definitely want 4-color output (yes, even for b&w pictures unless you don't care what they look like).
Nowhere, have I read that you should actually use CMYK mode for the images on your end - they want some form of RGB. The actual amount of color management info they give that comes straight from Lulu seems limited. The boards are filled up with people doing various Lulu color tests. Some saying that they've gotten good results; others disappointed. Oh, whatever. Right now I don't see any other alternative.
* * *
I setup my Lulu store: there ain't nothin' for sale there yet - but it won't be long now:
Click here to take a peek.
First product is going to be NEW YORK NIGHT - 2006
Then I'm definitely going to do one of the Mermaid Day Parade
And then a political calendar - NEW YORK PROTESTS
Lester suggested that I do a preliminary calendar based on the book we're writing together: THE 11TH MAN with pictures and quotes from same. At the rate I'm going you may have a calendar and no book. I guess that would be your pre-product publicity.
It really is sort of fun - and gives me a feeling of another avenue of expression opening up.
* * *
Update: from what I can figure out - Lulu is using a Xerox iGen 3 printer for color work. There are all sorts of threads on Lulu about color management, but most seem to recommend sRGB which seems odd given a narrower gamut - but what do I know about gamuts. Not that much right now but I'm going to find out. It would be kind of cool if the Calendar was printed on the iGen 3 since I could begin to make adjustments in my workflow that I could use later on for the book publishing part. The one thing I can say for sure, after reading numerous Lulu threads, is that for the book - you definitely want 4-color output (yes, even for b&w pictures unless you don't care what they look like).
Nowhere, have I read that you should actually use CMYK mode for the images on your end - they want some form of RGB. The actual amount of color management info they give that comes straight from Lulu seems limited. The boards are filled up with people doing various Lulu color tests. Some saying that they've gotten good results; others disappointed. Oh, whatever. Right now I don't see any other alternative.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)